The daily Post

The streets of Melbourne came to life last weekend as thousands of runners hit the bitumen for Run Melbourne 2017.

This year I tackled the 10km run with my partner Josie and our great mate Penny, all challenging ourselves to tackle a distance a little longer than we usually run! Another challenge that many choose to take part in during Run Melbourne is the fund raising element. This was the first time I’ve done anything like this, so it gave me a lot of insight into how to run a little mini campaign journey in the build up to the big day.

I choose the wonderful charity Heartfelt, who’s amazing president Gavin Blue is someone I’ve worked with on many projects in his business as a professional photographer, and for the charity itself. Heartfelt is a volunteer organisation of professional photographers from all over Australia and New Zealand dedicated to giving the gift of photographic memories to families that have experienced stillbirths, premature births or have children with serious and terminal illnesses.

All these services are provided free of charge.

My ultimate aim was be to raise enough to donate one of their camera and printer kits to a hospital that is to far for a volunteer to make it to a session.

And we did it! With the help of all the wonderful donors, my target amount was reached and passed, so there will be some valuable money headed to Heartfelt!

ps I also got a new personal best time for the distance, so that counts as a double win doesn’t it? 😉

This year we’ve had great fun providing content creation for Melbourne-based Suzuki Motorcycles Australia. Often off the back of busy media launches, some of the unseen moments have a time to shine in a great range of highlight clips that Suzuki then leverage as Social Media content to their followers and customers.

This style of clip can help create a fun and playful angle to what can often been seen as a serious subject, that of the product launch. On this particular project we had nearly 70 journalists in 5 days go through many test rides and pieces to camera, and it was great to be able to show the less serious side to what was one of the biggest launches of it’s type to take place in Australia.

We’ve enjoyed proving that our production workflow, can lead to quick turn-around, engaging content that viewers love.
And as such, we’ve now gone on the create more of these clips on subsequent launches for Suzuki Motorcycles, across Australia and Japan.

The work place can throw up some unusual challenges, one of mine back in 2008 was to grow a youtube channel for one of the TV Shows I handle the post production for here in Melbourne.

From a small beginning way back then, MXTV recently hit 11,660,026 views and that’s backed up by a subscriber base of 29405, who get a load of regular content either from finished episodes to vlog posts that the team record while on the road!

What has been truly interesting to watch is our jump in audience engagement in the last 12 months. We have always had steady growth, but in the last year, we’ve had a 25% increase in “minutes watched” with a total of 21,070,000 total minutes watched up until today! Our greatest source of this increase has been Mobile Phones. These account for nearly 50% of our audience views. Viewers though, are using a range of devices to access our YouTube channel though, from Smart TVs right through to games consoles.
Another interest change has been the fact that we have viewers coming in via YouTube Red, their “commercial free” service, where you’ll get none of those pesky pre-roll or pop up ads. This has accounted for nearly 66,000+ minutes of viewing, and will increase as viewers take up the paid-for option.

And being an Australian based show, you’d think our largest audience base would be based here, but for viewing minutes the US has nearly 50% more than the Australian count, with over 6 million lifetime views!

It’s been great to watch this outlet grow, and now boom as people globally take up more mobile technology, with Cisco Systems predicting that in coming years, internet video will account for over 80% of internet traffic. With the boom in streaming services it’s little wonder why!

As always, if you have any video production questions, across social media, corporate, training and even broadcast television just drop us a line via our contact form

Meanwhile, this great info graphic from hubspot.com provides some great video marketing points to consider:

Video Marketing Statistics for 2017

Building a YouTube channel and creating a valuable marketing tool April 27th, 2017Ben Lane

Late last year, my good friend Finn Dorney asked me if I could help out with filming a recording session in Melbourne, at the renowned Sing Sing Studios in Cremorne.

I didn’t hesitate to say yes, it’s important as a small business owner to be able to do pro-bono work and help out charity and not-for-profit organisation, and this project had a story that needed to be told.

I’d met Nick Balcombe a hand full of times, and what always struck me was his interest in making his friends happy. Nick was a passionate Tasmanian living his dream. While he was a very successful web designer and a much valued employee of the water industry, his passion was his music and loved ones. Following his tragic death due to stroke, his vast network of friends and fans have been keen to do something that celebrates his life and achievements, and create a legacy that Nick would be proud of.

Part of that legacy was finishing the second album that Nick had started to record before his death. It was truly a special chance to be involved in capturing part of the album process. Everyone was determined to complete Nick’s vision, and you could see his influence on all of them as musicians and their need to honour his memory.

Video is rapidly becoming the communications avenue of choice. In fact Cisco are projecting that by 2019 80% of internet traffic will be video, which will make it an outlet that no business can ignore.

So why should you choose to produce a video for your business? Well the simple fact is, branded video content is almost as powerful a tool to acquire and interact with clients as your company’s website, and may even surpass it, with the rise of video integration across so many web platforms, from Instagram to Facebook and beyond, making it a much easier way to reach clients than potentially optimising your webpage’s SEO.

According to a survey conducted by research firm Demand Metric, nearly three-quarters of B2B participating marketers reported that video gave them better conversion rates than any other type of content. On Facebook, Socialbakers found that posting a video can give you, on average, 135 percent more organic reach than a photo.

And with the availability to specifically target your clients as they browse their favourite websites via your video conveniently popping up, this is something you certainly can’t do with your website. Here are 4 points you should consider:

Don’t Cut Corners

Quality is nonnegotiable. Your video is a direct reflection of your brand. Don’t try to skimp on production costs. According to a survey conducted by Accenture Interactive, many people still find video ads intrusive, and low-quality videos — with ads, or not — are pretty much unacceptable to consumers.

Never fear though, you can make a high-quality video that’s two to three minutes long, for less than $5,000. Still, try to be flexible with your video budget if you can. A number of factors, including costs associated with equipment, location, licensing and other elements of the production life cycle, could affect the amount you ultimately pay for the finished product.

Authenticity shines

Authenticity is attractive. In video advertising, genuine communication — not talent — is what gets people to pay attention.

Take for example Chevrolet’s #DayItForward campaign, which it launched as a video series on Leap Day to promote a positive brand image. The video was a hit, but not for the reasons you might imagine. Yes, it featured a number of actors and celebrities, but it also took them out of the spotlight and leaned on real storytelling rather than acting prowess.

If your video includes interviews with company founders or other members of the team, those need to be natural, sincere conversations. So, avoid writing a rigid script and rehearsing lines over and over. If you do, subjects could end up looking and sounding like robots on camera, or come off as phony. Instead, have the production team conduct a casual interview with you. When your personality naturally shines through, your audience will relate to you more.

Think inside the box

Don’t spend loads of time and money trying to be the next Dollar Shave Club. Viral videos can certainly lead to sales, but so can videos that achieve a much smaller reach.

The key is to think about your target audience and communicate in a way that they appreciate. “The Glam,” a standard, 30-second spot for L’Oréal Paris La Palette Nude, relied on a traditional story line and TV-grade production quality to introduce audiences to a cosmetic product. The spot resonated among older test audiences especially, who are more used to this type of ad.

Social media platforms make it easier than ever to create an effective video ad campaign. Not sure you can do it? Consider this: In 2014, videos on Facebook were viewed 1 billion times a day. A little more than two years later, that number has grown to 8 billion — every day.

Given the ever-increasing importance of video in today’s business landscape, quality video ads are as essential as a website for effectively defining your brand’s values, purpose and product. Using these tips and tools, you’ll not only be able to reach your target audiences quickly and easily, but you could also attract customers you didn’t know you were looking for.

The art of telling a story can be a tricky situation. But some times all it can take is a little imagination to unlock a world of magic and adventure as you tell that story and the characters it involves.

I’ve only just discovered this great course from pixarinabox.org via Khan Academy. The awesome team at Pixar, who are arguably some of the best story tellers in the business give their insights into what it takes to engage and create stories that transport you in to another time/life/world

We’d just like to take a moment to say what a great 12 months we’ve just had! The BL Media Solutions 2017 sizzle reel has just been finished and there was so many great projects that we have worked on in the last 12 months, we couldn’t fit every thing in!

We always pride ourselves, on firstly meeting then exceeding our clients expectations, and looking back at the diversity of projects over the last year our clients are happy with all our work, across almost every production platform you can think of. From budgets small and big, to projects that are a quick turn around, to TV series that are months in the planning, BL Media Solutions have thrived on every challenge that has been presented…

And here’s hoping that the next 12 months are just as much fun!

What a busy 12 months providing you our best work! February 17th, 2017Ben Lane

Late last year the crew at Capture Point Media asked us to join them in capturing a special day at the Adairs Headquarters in Scorsby, Victoria.

This great day saw 3 young people from the Make-A-Wish foundation join the Adairs creative team to help create some limited edition bed linen that will then be sold across Adairs outlets to help raise money for Make-A-Wish. This will enable Make-A-Wish to help make the dreams come true for even more special children around Australia.

It was a fun filled day, full of creativity, drawing, painting… and maybe a few donuts 😉

It was great to be there as the designs took shape over the day, and too see how proud these kids were to take part in such a cool project!